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Comment by Thoeu388 | Hacker News Reader

Germany was uber green for like 50 years, yet it failed to deliver technological breakthrough. All green bets like diesel, biomass, natural gas, wind and solar, failed to deliver. And current leader in solar and batteries is China.

Germany is now burning huge amount of coal, and importing it across globe from South America. And yet it struggles to heat it's houses.

Current German economy is not sustainable without cheap energy.

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None of this is true. Germany has had a conservative government from 1982 to 1999, and from 2005 to 2021. The Green party has been in the government as a junior partner only once from 1999 to 2005. The conservative governments mainly bet on nuclear (until Fukushima) and on cheap russian gas, while neglecting renewables. Coal consumption has dropped significantly in the last decades with a small resurgence last year due to the russian gas embargo. Nonetheless, the gas supply for heating never ran low since the russian invasion.

Is Germany on a fault line?

Yes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Erdbebenzonen.png

All of Germany is less shaky than zone 4, according to the map you link to. In comparison, half the population of California lives in zone 4 if I recall correctly.

Green party is irrelevant in this.

Germany had huge scare from Chernobyl. On 2006 there was no single student graduating from nuclear energy, in entire country! How did they bet on nuclear energy?

Parts of HN continue to live in an alternative reality. I fail to grasp how this obviously factually wrong comment can even exist, let alone be a top comment.

* Germany's coal use is now at a historic minimum, comparable to the 2020 COVID year outlier

* Germany does not use coal for heating

* Germany does not struggle to heat its homes. Even if it did, it was around 16 degrees Celsius around new year's, so people did not need to heat much in the warm winter

* Solar, wind and renewables in general are one of the most exciting and fastest developing industries in the world

Could people check basic easy to find facts before posting?

But Germany hardly has any renewable options.

Why’d they screw up Nuclear so badly?

Their “green” approach had a lot of problems

Last year they passed law to reduce heating temperatures. Using radiators too much could be fined.

> Germany's coal use is now at a historic minimum,

With coal powerplants in hot standby for wind? And imports from other countries that use coal heavily?

> Solar, wind ... exciting and fastest developing

That is the point! It should not be exiting and developing. By now it should be booring and reliable.

> Using radiators too much could be fined.

Source?

The law was not changed to reduce heating temperatures since you can regulate temperature yourself. The law defines a minimal temperature that needs to be reached, otherwise you are entitled to have the heating fixed or get your rent reduced. This minimum was reduced. Ironically this helped my neighbor finally get her heating fixed since she realized she can complain about this to her landlord and they fixed it fast once she did that.

Again, coal use is at a historic minimum and this is easy to find. Here is the chart for electricity production until 2022 [1] and here is the data for the first half of this year [2]:

> The electricity production from lignite was down 21 percent, hard coal was down 23 percent, natural gas was down 4 percent, and nuclear declined by 57 percent, compared to 2022 values.

As far as I know heating with coal is negligible.

I don't get your point about renewables - their expansion has been on a basically exponential curve, but the starting point was practically zero. The world is installing massive amounts and will continue to do so - Germany played a large role in that.

[1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

[2] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/...

> All green bets like diesel, biomass, natural gas

That's a huge clue right there. Germany bet on the most conservative solutions (keeping their diesel cars and house heating systems) and guess what, they don't work. Burning food for energy was never going to be good idea, and biodiesel was never going be clean enough for cars, but they went for it anyway because they didn't dare touch the auto companies.

It was (sadly) never uber green. It was always mostly coal based. These green bets you are talking about, just like e-fuels today, were mostly greenwashing gimmicks pushed by the industry.

Both German export to China and German automotive industry faced disruptions. China's economy slowed down and China anyway can do without German technology at this point. And German automotive industry cannot compete with EV's yet. BYD is replacing Volkswagen.

End of cheap gas is just a cherry on top (de-industralizing German Chemical sector which moves outside Europe).

But Germany is capable country in crisis. They will overcame...

> During the last 26 years the exports of Germany to China have increased at an annualized rate of 11.8%, from $6.58B in 1995 to $121B in 2021.

https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/chn/partner/d...

EVs are not disruption, those are pushed by regulations and subsidies. Germans basically decided to dismantle their car manufacturing industry.

> pushed by regulations and subsidies

a sort of disruption it is... ;-)

Because of stupid decisions like shutting down nuclear plants. The greens are going to lose big time in the next election. But nonetheless AFAIK Germany is still one of the largest countries pushing for renewable energy.

It was not stupid decision. Those plants were at end of their life, extending their life would be very expensive. There were no major investment in this industry for past 20 years. French nuclear plants have the same problem, and will be retiring soon.

They almost cost nothing to start again

https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1681951312492253185

> Krümmel, big enough to power a million people, still has an operating license despite closing 2011: saved by antinuclear politics, ironically

I don't think this reactor has a license. Currently it is planned to dismantle it , soon. The reactor was especially ill fated, since it was plagued with a series of serious problems.

To get it running again, would be expensive.

Shows that the guy posting on Twitter has no idea about the actual reactor.

Turns out the real force behind German engineering was cheap gas after all

It Is Difficult to Get a Country to Change Something When Their Profits Depend on not Charging It.

It's not just solar and batteries China has a lead in. ICE cars requires many precise manufacturing that Germany has lots of experience with.

Electric cars are way more simpler and China has a leg up here.

They are simpler but that doesn’t mean they are more reliable yet.

At least in the US electric cars score poor reliability pretty consistently, because there’s a lack of maturity and quality.

I'm not taking about reliability. I'm talking about complexity.

ICE have a method of converting gasoline explosions to rotational energy which powers the drive and the battery.

Electric car have a method of converting electrical potential to rotational energy.

Germany is very specialized in making precise part for ICE that just don't exist in Electrical cars. Could they be reoriented for something more? Maybe but not in near term.

How can we deliver when there are laws where anyone can block wind energy only because they don't like how it disturbs the beauty of the landscape?!?

Back home in Portugal there is no discussion, wind parks are built and that is it.

Yup -- people don't realize that if you want to get large-scale projects done, you have to step on a few people's toes.

And kill scores of birds of prey and wildfowl?

All the countries that have won wind parks over Germany still have their nature just fine.

Even better, their nature appreciates the amount of green energy being generated, that Germany still is catching up to.

Same thing happens even if you build a house. Every square foot of land human take, removes a square foot of land for animals, bugs, plants, fungi. It may be less impactful to the human psyche when it's indirect damage, but it's still damage.

Bald eagles, buzzards, griffon, sea eagles, red kites, ospreys, harriers, merlins, eagle owls, kestrels, Egyptian vultures and so on do not fly in to houses on a daily basis.

What a ludicrous comparison.

It's not about flying into them. It's about removing livable and forageable space. It indirectly leads to the death and reduction of living things.

The focus on the visceral thought of a bird flying into something is what I meant about being impactful on the human psyche.

Are you against windows as well? Those kill billions of birs.

Wind turbines kill such a small number of birds compared to cats, cars, windows, powerlines etc.

Start by banning cars, then we can have the wildlife discussion.

Now that it is beyond doubt, do not forget how German media and journalists have been misrepresenting and lying about their green energy successes for decades.

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